One Good Thing
by bondageluvr
Summary: A glance into what could have happened right after the Final Battle. Snarry, which means M/M. Loving and caring Snape-caring, obviously , rated for implied violence & blood


_**Author's Notes: **__**Okay, this is quite different from anything I've written. A small insight into what **__**might **__**have happened on the night of the Final Battle. I needed to let out some feelings, so don't expect this to be a real plot-pusher. That's all this is - a small bit of feeling. **_

_**Plus I need to play around with the characters a bit, since I'm seriously considering starting a midi-fic on Snarry, so I might have also done this for a bit of insight. **_

_**Very un-betaed. **_

_**Reviews are always welcome. **_

Stumbling into the dark vault which held the staircase leading to the dungeons, Harry groaned, feeling one of his wounds stretch open and blood starting to seep through the measly bandage he had made from a fallen Death Eater's cloak. The dawn had broken hours ago, and the battle had been over mere seconds after that, when he had caught his wand mid-air, sending his opponent sprawling lifelessly in the hall of his first home. His friends had all been shipped off to the already overflowing Hospital Wing and he, being perhaps one of the few lucky almost unscathed ones - according to himself, of course - had batted Poppy's hands away and muttered something about 'clearing his head' before making his way out of the infirmary, unyielding to her protests, his wand in one hand while the other held his side subtly, pressing down on the barely covered wound he had received. They didn't need to worry more than they were already and there were far too many people in need of medical help without him being pushed forward because he was 'the Savior'. Barely having escaped the attention that had been lavished onto his persona, Harry had taken a secret passageway out of the Entrance Hall and ended up in front of the doors that led to the dungeons. Why he had chosen that particular place was unclear to him, if only because he was too tired to care about his subconscious playing tricks on him, egging him on to visit the quarters of the man who had helped end it all - paid for it with his life - a dear price.

Feeling his way down the stone steps and slipping on… blood, probably, Harry had some time to think to himself. They all called him 'the Hero of the Hour', 'the Chosen One', and his ultimate favorite - 'the Savior'. Yet the ubiquitous feeling of _just Harry _was omnipresent whatever words had been said to him in a whispered rush after the Battle - in his own mind, which had probably not yet caught up with the reality of his lifetime mission being over - Harry was still just himself: a teenager who had been unfortunate enough to get caught up in the enormous mess that was his life. He had never particularly liked publicity and every hint of attention had made him duck his head or look away, what would it be like when he emerges from the dungeons? Better yet, what would happen inside the late Potion Master's rooms? Maybe he would be lucky enough to bleed out and die quietly, getting an easy way out of the post-War mess. Of course, though, he could never do that: they still needed him. Winning the War had been one thing, rebuilding afterwards was a sign of true commitment and he, having the Hero Complex seemingly etched into his DNA, couldn't pass up the opportunity to kiss babies and shake hands. Rather, give all the orphaned babies a new home and reattach the lost hands of War veterans. Yes, that sounded just about right.

Although at that very moment, all he really wanted to do was rest, sleep on the shock of _the End_ and let his mind conjure up a new beginning for himself.

He stopped in front of the heavy wooden door that had been blasted off one of its hinges, a small sombre painting adorning it, clearly for protective purposes. A viper, perhaps the blandest-looking snake in the world was dozing quietly in the lower left-hand corner, oblivious to the racket that had been shaking the very foundation of Hogwarts just a few minutes ago. The painting was incredibly simple, something one would buy for a Galleon in a thrift shop on the edge of Hogsmeade, and somehow Harry suspected that had been the case. Clearing his throat, he startled the viper awake as it raised its head and looked at him with bleary, beady eyes, cocking its head to the side. Harry realized the snake must not have been able to speak English, and could only comprehend what had been spoken to her without a response. Hoping his ability was still with him, he sighed, calling forth the only gift he had ever been thankful to the Dark Lord for:

"_Hello?"_

Raising its body a bit off the ground, the snake seemed curious:

"_A true Speaker? How interesting. Yes, my Master told me a Speaker would venture into his quarters." _Not believing his luck, Harry took a small step forward, wincing as his wound reminded him of its existence. Taking a deep breath, he steadied himself by putting one of his hands against the wall and forced a friendly smile to appear on his face:

"_Does that mean you will let me through?"_

"_No."_

The short response had been neither amiable nor hostile, but Harry could feel the snake's caution towards him. He had heard before that they were particularly faithful to their owners, and Naigini had been living proof of that - even though she had also been a Horcrux. It seemed that painted snakes also shared the trait, as the viper leaned forwards, not exactly menacing, but ready to strike, ineffective as that may be. Struggling to take a breath suddenly, as the air got stuck in his chest and the wound started throbbing with pulsing pain, Harry tried to put as much weight as he was able to onto his hand which, in turn, was supporting him against the wall. He just needed a place to rest, damn it. Maybe a potion or two from Snape's private stock, and he would be fine. He _had _to be fine, for he was supposed to be the beacon of hope to those who had lost their loved ones at war. His life wasn't his own just as much as it wasn't during the War. It was one thing living for something, an entirely different thing was living _as _something: the Boy Who Lived, the Chosen One, the Savior of the Wizarding World.

"_I don't suppose you will give me a password?" _He hissed to the snake in a last desperate attempt, watching it shake its head firmly. A password… What could possibly be safe enough to guard a suspicious Potion Master's room, something neither the Light nor Dark could guess, something only Snape would be able to bring forth to his mind? Shuffling through the memories he had seen before in the Headmaster's office, Harry hoped against hope to find something suitable.

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"_You're a witch!"_

"_That's not a nice thing to say!"_

"_GRYFFINDOR!"_

"…_Mudblood…"_

_Clearing his throat, Snape tapped Lily on her shoulder nervously. She had been sitting next to her fellow Gryffindors, namely, the Marauders, as the bunch of no-good dunderheads had chosen to call themselves, thinking it would give them even more prestige at the school. Of course, it did. Rolling her eyes at one of James Potter's horrible unfunny jokes, Lily turned around in her seat, only to smile wider at the sight of her friend. By the looks of it, they might have been in fourth or fifth year, not quite out of childhood yet already deep into adolescence. Potter's lanky limbs and Black's macho - or so he thought - stubble, which he refused to shave and let grow for a painstaking week, were proof enough of that. The girl on the other side of Lily already had bright red lipstick on and rhinestone-encrusted glasses, making her look like a mixture of Luna Lovegood and Rita Skeeter. Lily herself, though, didn't have an ounce of make-up on, her hair tied back into a neat ponytail, her freckles standing out on her otherwise pale face. _

"_Hey, can I talk to you?" Snape asked, his voice shaking. He looked over to the Marauders who had fallen silent upon his approach and were scrutinizing him, as if trying to find as many jokes about his hair and clothes as they could in those puny pin-sized brains of theirs. "In private?"_

"_Ooh, Snivellus, untrusting much? We're Evans' friends, whatever you have to say to her, you can say in front of us. We promise we won't laugh," Potter quipped, his eyes narrowing. It was so obvious he had developed an Earth-shattering crush on Lily, and now took every opportunity to behave as clumsily as he could around her, like any teenage boy would do in his position. Sighing impatiently, Snape cast a pleading look at his friend, hoping she would get the hint. Being one of the brightest witches in the school, Lily merely grinned at him and stood up, taking his hand as he helped her from her seat. Satisfied at Potter's grimace of displeasure, Snape nodded to the rest of them and strode away, motioning for Lily to follow him. She complied, giving him a weary look but walking off, not sparing a backwards glance to where the Marauders were sitting, deep in a whispered conversation, undoubtedly about the show they had witnessed moments before. It was clear why Potter was so adverse to him, Snape mused, knowing the boy was simply jealous of his amiable relationship with Lily, something he had never been able to have because of that big head of his. Lily Evans was not that shallow, she would never swoon at the sight of him as the other girls would, she actually had a brain and intended to use it. _

_They walked over to the lakeside and Snape silently plopped down onto the slightly damn grass, motioning for Lily to do the same. She nodded tensely, as the lakeside was always a place for serious talks for them, unlike other students who only came here for snogging sessions and smoking, something they had picked up from the Muggles over the last few years. _

"_What is it, Sev?" Lily asked quietly, seeing the boy wring his fingers in his lap, almost as if he were trying to contain himself from saying something. Biting his lower lip, Snape looked up into her vivid green eyes - eyes that would haunt him for years to come - and gulped nervously. _

"_I think… You have to promise me something first," he cut off the beginning of his own sentence, now looking at Lily as though seeing her for the first time in his life, like a man in awe. "Promise me that whatever I say right now, you will still treat me the same. That we shall remain friends, no matter what." _

_Nodding slowly, Lily answered, her eyes fixed on Snape intently:_

"_I promise." Another deep breath was taken by Snape as his lips moved to articulate the words that had been desperate to burst out of him for months now, words that he needed to share with someone, but could never muster up the courage to. _

"_I think I fancy men."_

"_You promised we would stay friends!" Snape bellowed at Lily, who only glanced at him wearily, her mouth set in a tight line:_

"_You called me a Mudblood."_

"_I'm sorry."_

"'_Sorry' isn't enough, Snape."_

"_I'll do whatever you want, just please, please -,"_

"_No. What's done is done. And, Snape," Lily stopped for a moment, pausing at the door. "Don't worry. Your secret is safe with me."_

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"_Lily."_

"_Incorrect."_

"_Evans."_

"_No."_

Harry groaned in frustration, feeling the makeshift gauze on his wound get wetter by the second. Who knew some of the Death Eaters were actually apt at spell-work? The hex had been particularly nasty, a slight variation on _Sectumsempra_, perhaps, though it did less damage. The real danger of it lay not in the number of cuts it left, but rather in their depth. He had to get a blood-replenishing potion soon, or the Hero would indeed fall quite ungracefully from his pedestal. The snake wasn't helping, smirking at him - if snakes could smirk, anyway. It would have been so much easier if Snape had been in love with his mother, then, the choice of password would at least have been clear. But no, he couldn't even manage that, the git.

"_Severus Snape is a homosexual."_

"_I am aware," _the snake replied, giving him a condescending look.

"_No, I meant the password."_

"_Oh. No."_

The trial-hit way of guessing Dumbledore's password would never work with Snape - it was clear the man had been very secretive, something he and Harry shared to an extent, although it seemed like Snape was slightly paranoid about security. What could possibly be the password to a room nobody, student _or _staff would ever venture into? Something nobody could guess, something nobody would know. Gah, there wasn't much public knowledge on one Severus Snape, Harry mused to himself, eyeing the snake. Why was he so adamant on getting inside? All this time he could have been lying in the Hospital Wing, being cared for and tended to by Poppy, whose stock of potions probably held something for his wound. No, Harry couldn't do that - there were people with their limbs detached and werewolf bites. A simple slash cut was something he could take care of by himself. If he were able to open the damn door, anyway.

"_Could you at least give me a hint?"_

"_I told you, I-,"_

Suddenly, the heavy door swung open inwards, making Harry do a double take. There wasn't supposed to be anyone…? Or…? What he saw inside, though, erased all intelligible thought as Harry nearly collapsed in shock against the cold stone wall.

There, with one long-fingered hand holding the door open and the other poised at his neck, seemingly in the middle of applying a salve or some sort of healing concoction, his face exhausted yet the lines not as heavy as they had once been, his dark cloak in tatters, his dragon-hide boots dirty and scratched, his beady black eyes guarded and weary…

"Snape?"

"Get in. _Now_," was the only answer Harry got before he was pulled heavily into the room, the door slamming shut behind him with a dull resounding thud. His brain unable to process what had just transpired, Harry stood, rooted to the spot, in the corridor of what was a very welcoming apartment, decorated with neutral black-and-beige tones, slightly darker than was acceptable in English society, and yet comforting in its own personal way. The narrow corridor led to what Harry believed was the sitting room, and from what he could see, it had also adopted a similar color-scheme, a fire crackling in the hearth and a small brown rug lying in front of it, covering the stone floor which Harry knew to be deathly cold in winter. What concerned him more than anything was not Professor Snape's choice of decoration, nor the unexpected warmth in his quarters, but the fact that he was standing there, looking at the man who he had seen die just a few hours ago, a man who had been an elusive spy from the start, a man who had first made Harry question everything about himself: his parentage, his character, his capacity, his sexuality…

It could be trick, Harry knew, yet on some level he also knew it just _couldn't be_. He had seen the light in Snape's eyes go out for the last time, he had heard his hand drop to the floor as death sucked him of his life power, though here he stood, looking as haggard as he had ever been, wounded and stained with blood, a nasty-smelling potion working on the cuts on his neck, yet _there he was_. Alive. Relief flooded Harry's senses as he took a step towards his once-most-hated professor and unexplainably, unconsciously, unthinkingly, enveloped his arms around the man.

"What -,"

Snape never got to finish his sentence, laced with tired indignation as Harry pressed himself closer to the Potions Master, inhaling the putrid smell of War and blood and _death_, but never wanting to let go. For some reason, Severus Snape's safety and his being alive was somehow more important to Harry than Voldemort's demise, than the devastation upstairs, than his own health, as his wound silently seeped more blood onto his clothes. He winced as the man silently put a timid arm around him, reciprocating the hug reluctantly. He knew Snape wasn't a very tactile person, he had never seen Snape go further than a handshake, accompanied by a filthy glance and a sneer. He distanced himself from his former professor a bit, looking into the dark midnight eyes and then, just as impulsively and childishly, pressed a chaste kiss to the thin chapped lips of the Potion's Master. The man stood motionless for a second, yet seemed to regain his senses as he opened up the kiss softly, offering Harry the comfort he deserved. As they parted, Harry gave him a weak smile and buried his face into the man's robes.

"You're alive," Harry murmured, his words half-muffled by Snape's heavy woolen cloak. He inhaled once again, hoping this was reality, not a comatose dream, not an illusion caused by his dying brain, not a horrid nightmare, he hoped he wouldn't be shaken awake now, to see the ceiling of the Hospital Wing or the feet of victorious Death Eaters running by, his own body lying forgotten on the damp grass…

"So are you."

That was all he needed to hear, Harry decided as he gently separated himself from Snape, a small smile playing on his lips. His expression only seemed to confuse the Potions Master as his eyebrows were brought together by a frown:

"Are you all right, Potter?"

Nodding, Harry winced once more as his wound throbbed again, and clutched at his side. That seemed to attract Snape's attention as he brought his head down just a bit to look at Harry's side. Biting his lip, just like Harry had seen him do in the memory, he gestured to the room partially hidden by the corridor in front of them:

"Come in. We need to get this healed before we have any conversation."

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"You are lucky, Potter. Half an hour more and the world would never see their Savior ever again," Snape murmured, his former acidity back where it belonged. His own wounded neck had been carefully wrapped in a white gauze, some color finally returning to his face. They had both taken a couple of pain-reducing potions before Snape had set to work, healing Harry's wound with a muttered curse and applying a carefully selected potion he had taken out from his personal storage cabinet.

"You call me lucky? When you're supposed to be lying in the Shrieking Shack, with nothing but vermin for company, dead?" Harry replied, not taking his eyes off Snape, feeling a pang of guilt at how sharp the words had sounded. Old habits die hard, he thought to himself as Snape merely raised an eyebrow and toasted him with a mug of tea he had just brewed for the two of them. Somewhere overhead, people were still being healed, the dead accounted for, and they had probably already started looking for the missing Hero. Nobody would have ever thought that there he was, enjoying a chat by the fire with the former Headmaster, pondering how he had escaped his impending doom.

"Perhaps Lady Luck had been on both our sides today," Snape answered, taking a sip. Harry's eyes landed on his long pale fingers that encased the mug and suddenly he felt a strange urge to have those very fingers in his hair, on his face, around his wrist, around his… "I was ready to die, Potter, you should know that. I have been prepared for that moment for a very long time."

"I saw you die," Harry whispered, the memories flooding back. How horrible it had been, to see another human being simply extinguish. Cease to exist. Nothing. Darkness. He had done nothing. He hadn't been able to. "I saw you die, and suffer and I couldn't do anything and -,"

"Potter, spare me the sentimentality. Of course you could have done nothing, Naigini is a highly poisonous and aggressive snake. If the venom hadn't been almost impossible to eliminate from my bloodstream, her strikes alone would have condemned me to die. And yet, I lived. For some reason, the white light was not there for me when I needed it to. Unfinished business, I suppose."

"I suppose," Harry echoed, staring at Snape. Brought back from the dead, just like he himself had been. He could only imagine what horrors the _Daily Prophet _had to say about the pair of them - '_The two heroes: resurrected'_, or better yet: _'The Saint and the Scum: earthbound'_, or some similarly horrible title that would fail to grasp the profundity of the situation and just make Harry look like a disturbed hero and Snape like a deranged lunatic or, Harry thought with a shudder, a traitor. Yes, clearing Snape's name would be difficult, he mused to himself. After all, he had gone out of his way just a year before to make sure everyone had known Snape was spy, a thief and a bloody murderer. "What happens now?"

"Who knows."

Silence fell on the room, uncomfortable and almost itchy, as Harry struggled for something to say. He had been ready to accept the fact that he would never engage in wordily jousting with this man ever again, yet nothing seemed to go as Harry had thought. Both of them being alive was a miracle, both were unexpected.

"I saw your memories."

"I gathered." Snape swallowed a mouthful of tea and looked at Harry grimly, as if contemplating something. Then, with a sigh, he closed his eyes for a second, as if all the tiredness was coming back to haunt him. "Look, Potter -,"

"Harry. Please. Harry. Just for tonight," the young man said pleadingly, knowing it was a long shot. Snape had _never _used his first name, and there was no reason for him to start doing so now - apart from the obvious: near-death experiences had a tendency to soften people up, maybe even make them tolerable to society. Apparently, the rule applied to Severus Snape - something incredible in its own rite as rules usually seemed to pass him by - as he sighed:

"Harry, then. Your mother was my best friend and Merlin knows, we went way back. Back before Hogwarts - believe me, such long friendships are quite rare between wizards, they all usually find their companions here, at school, or, in your case, on your way _to _school. Lily was the first person to see past my… unfavorable appearance, and she had been kind enough to be a shoulder to cry one when I desperately needed one. Please do not interrupt me." Put a hand up when Harry opened his mouth to interject and looked at him sternly. Not the way he used to, when only a sidelong glance from the dreaded potions professor could make your blood run cold and your ancestors weep, but a normal, Professor McGonagall-like stern, something all teachers of the world had mastered. When Harry promptly nodded, bowing his head and motioned for him to continue, Snape propped his head up with his hand, his elbow on the armrest of the comfortable chair he had relaxed his tired, battered body in. "I loved her as one would love a sister, maybe even a _twin _sister. My indiscretion with using Death Eater language cost me more than just her company. It cost me all the mistakes I did after I lost it. She, it seems, had been the only good thing in my life…"

He took a deep breath, putting his mug aside on the ornate coffee table that stood next to him:

"Besides you."

"Besides me," Harry repeated, fighting the urge to check his ears for possible curse-induced injury. "With all due respect, sir, I think it's safe to say I'm not since countless times you have called me a good-for-nothing dunderhead, a child-sized version of my bigheaded father, a swine and a failure and -,"

He was silenced by a pair of lips crashing onto his, a strangled moan making its way up his throat and out into the cool night air that was now being warmed between the two of them.

Just for tonight, he could be the only good thing. Just for tonight.


End file.
